Kerala first IT prepared State to implement GST

Chennai: Kerala would be the first State in the country to be Information Technology prepared to implement the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) according to a CII-KPMG survey report released today. Venu Srinivasan, Immediate Past President, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and MD, Sundaram-Clayton Ltd. released the CII-KPMG survey report on GST at a seminar on ‘Goods and Services Tax’, organized by CII at Chennai.

The Centre plans to introduce GST and DTC (Direct Taxes Code) from April 1, 2011. While DTC would replace the Income Tax Act, GST would replace most indirect taxes at the central and state levels like service tax, excise duty, VAT, cesses, surcharges and local levies.

Keeping in view the significance of this reform, KPMG in India in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conducted an online survey containing set of questions revolving around the structure of GST (i.e. Rates and Enactment), the level of impact on their business, and their level of readiness for the change. The survey received an enormous response from more than 200 senior executives of companies from across industry (i.e. IT / ITeS, Automotive, FMCG, Pharma, Real Estate, etc).

40% of respondents feel that change in the IT / System would be a key challenge with supply chain re-structuring figuring next on the list. Further, 68% of the respondents feel that they would require at least 3-4 months for reconfiguring their IT systems to attune their business to the new tax regime

Commenting on the report K R Girish, Sr. Partner, KPMG said, “They have done their homework (on GST) and moreover, Kerala does not have any industries. Therefore if GST is rolled out as planned by Apr 1, 2011, they will be the first in the country to be IT prepared”.

The survey sample size was 200 respondents from various industries. 34% of companies, which reported over Rs.1,000 crores turnover participated in it. The mode of conducting the study was ‘online’. About 80% of companies who have presence in more than one state had responded, he added.